A Spelman junior made a scientific first in tuberculosis research

Spelman College student MaKyra Wilson became the first person to engineer variants of AmiB2, a newly characterized gene tied to how tuberculosis bacteria survive and spread — work she did as an intern in a Harvard lab. The DNA tools from her discovery will be named after her and used by future researchers. Tuberculosis still kills a million people a year; Wilson's work could help crack drug-resistant strains.